Continuous Casting

1. Continuous Casting: Introduction
2. Temperature Control
3. Mold Oscillation Settings
4. Heat Flux in the Mold
5. Heat Flux in the Secondary Cooling Zone
6. Critical Strain During Continuous Casting
7. Bulging Strain
8. Bending and Straightening Strain
9. Misalignment Strain
10. Combined Strain in the Strand
11. Internal Crack Formation Through Hot Tearing
12. Transverse Cracking
13. Microsegregation
14. Continuous Casting Simulation

After secondary steelmaking, the molten steel is usually continuously cast via a tundish into a water-cooled copper mold causing a thin shell to solidify. This ‘strand’ is then withdrawn through a set of guiding rolls and further cooled by spraying with a fine water mist. The solidified shell continues to thicken until the strand is fully solidified. Finally, the strand is cut into desired lengths and these are either discharged to a storage area or to the hot rolling mill. A wide range of strand dimensions can be cast depending on final application: ‘slabs’ for flat products such as plate and strip, ‘blooms’ for sections such as beams, and ‘billets’ for long products such as wire. Techniques have also been developed to cast steel directly to thin strip (<3 mm thick) and cast strip is now available commercially.

Learning Outcomes for this Section

After completing this section, you should be able to:

• Describe the main components and layout of slab, bloom and billet casters
• Explain the functions of the tundish and mold
• Explain the purpose of mold oscillation, and the effects of oscillation stroke, frequency and casting speed
• Describe and sketch typical temperature profiles for the liquid steel in both ladle and tundish
• Define the terms bulging, misalignment and bending/straightening strains and explain the main parameters that affect each
• Successfully perform a 3-ladle sequence cast in a continuous casting simulation

References

• AISE,  The Making, Shaping and Treating of Steel - Casting Volume CD, The AISE Steel Foundation,  
• Bernhard, C & Sjökvist, T, Die interaktive Stranggießsimulation auf www.steeluniversity.org Berg- und Hüttenmännische Monatshefte, SpringerWienNewYork, 0005-8912 

External Links

• SteelMATTER: Entrapment of Non-Metallic Inclusions 
•  SteelMATTER: Video of Ingot Casting 
•  SteelMATTER: Video of Continuous Casting 

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